January 08, 2011

Shrewd BS

Six years ago a small Texas publisher released an obscure book written by a father-son research team [T. Colin Campbell and son]. The work, based on a series of studies conducted in rural China and Taiwan, challenged the conventional wisdom about health and nutrition by espousing the benefits of a plant-based diet.

To everyone’s surprise, the book, called “The China Study,” has since sold 500,000 copies, making it one of the country’s best-selling nutrition titles. The book focuses on the knowledge gained from the China Study, a 20-year partnership of Cornell University, Oxford University and the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine that showed high consumption of animal-based foods is associated with more chronic disease, while those who ate primarily a plant-based diet were the healthiest.

Last fall, former President Bill Clinton even cited the book in explaining how he lost 24 pounds by converting to a plant-based diet in hopes of improving his heart health. The president gave up dairy, switching to almond milk, and says he lives primarily on beans and other legumes, vegetables and fruit, although he will, on rare occasions, eat fish.

Regular and psychic readers know where I am headed since I commenced to obsess on this on New Years Day, but here we go.

The Times recently reviewed a new book by science writer Gary Taubes titled "WHY WE GET FAT, And What to Do About It". His gist - the sugar/insulin cycle regulates fat accumulation and use; the modern diet which is high in sugar and refined carbohydrates overloads and breaks down that system. Let me clip this from a review of his earlier tome, "Good Calories, Bad Calories":

When working to absolve dietary fat of evil-doing and pointing up refined carbohydrates as the real culprit complicit in such modern illnesses as obesity, heart disease and cancer, Taubes’s examinations of stacks of medical studies are illuminating and largely convincing. Yet another aim of his book is “to look critically at a straightforward question to which most of us believe we know the answer: What constitutes a healthy diet? What should we eat if we want to live a long and healthy life?” And further, “There is a more important issue here as well, and it extends far beyond the ideal weight-loss diet. Prior to the official acceptance of the lowfat- is-good-health dogma, clinical investigators . . . had proposed another hypothesis for the cause of heart disease, diabetes, colorectal and breast cancer, tooth decay and. . . obesity. The hypothesis was based on decades of eyewitness testimony from missionary and colonial physicians and two consistent observations: that these ‘diseases of civilization’ were rare to nonexistent among isolated populations that lived traditional lifestyles and ate traditional diets, and that these diseases appeared in populations only after they were exposed to Western foods—in particular sugar, flour, white rice, and maybe beer.”

So, we have competing hypotheses: does the China Study demonstrate that animal protein is a problem, or does it suggest that refined carbs are the problem? To be fair, the answer may not matter much, since the recommendations largely overlap (check Bill Clinton's diet above or this summary of the China Syndrome:

Still, one might expect Ms. Parker-Pope to have a bit of curiosity on this point. Instead, she makes no attempt to probe the differences and common ground between the China Plant diet and the Taubes No Refined Carbs diet.

Fortunately, in the midst of a minor reader rebellion, one of her commenters provided the missing research:

But the actual data from the original publication paints a different picture. Figure 1 shows selected correlations between macronutrients and cancer mortality. Most of them are not statistically significant, which means that the probability the correlation is due to chance is greater than five percent.

It is interesting to see, however, the general picture that emerges. Sugar, soluble carbohydrates, and fiber all have correlations with cancer mortality about seven times the magnitude of that with animal protein, and total fat and fat as a percentage of calories were both negatively correlated with cancer mortality.

The only statistically significant association between intake of a macronutrient and cancer mortality was a modest negative correlation with total oil and fat intake as measured on the questionnaire. As an interesting aside, there was a highly significant negative correlation between cancer mortality and home-made cigarettes!

Hmm, roll your own for better health? I digress.

It seems, based on both the Campbell recommendations and this statistical follow-up, that the China Study actually confirmed the "diseases of civilization" phenomena discussed at length by Taubes in "Good Calories, Bad Calories". Taubes would also predict that any simpler diet that eliminates refined carbs will improve health. And common sense would leave one wondering whether our Paleo ancestors were really vegetarians, with all that large and small game around.

Well. I am about half-way through "Good Calories, Bad Calories" and it is absolutely riveting (in a dry and dusty way). Read as a diet guide it is interesting, but the real intrigue is in his long, detailed discussion of how the scientifc process can run off the rails. Our current dietary conceptions have become analogous to Ptolemic astronomy prior to Galileo and Copernicus (my analogy, for better or worse.) Could there be a bubble in nutritional science? Well, a lot of experts backed the tech bubble and the housing bubble, so I am far from confident that a science bubble is impossible. [No Google bubble! I now see a Dec 19, 2010 LA Times article vindicating a big part of the Taubes argument. Can we hear from Harvard?

"Fat is not the problem," says Dr. Walter Willett, chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. "If Americans could eliminate sugary beverages, potatoes, white bread, pasta, white rice and sugary snacks, we would wipe out almost all the problems we have with weight and diabetes and other metabolic diseases."

..."The country's big low-fat message backfired," says Dr. Frank Hu, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. "The overemphasis on reducing fat caused the consumption of carbohydrates and sugar in our diets to soar. That shift may be linked to the biggest health problems in America today."

Let's stay in Boston:

"Dietary fat used to be public enemy No. 1," says Dr. Edward Saltzman, associate professor of nutrition and medicine at Tufts University. "Now a growing and convincing body of science is pointing the finger at carbs, especially those containing refined flour and sugar."]

In the 1950's to the 1970's scientists concluded that fat in the diet leads to fat in the bloodstream and on arterial walls. Rather than subsequently undermine public confidence with a mixed message or changed message, dietary fat has been the villain ever since. Does the dietary fat notion make sense? Well, when a person eats fructose (sugar in the diet) it is metabolized to triglycerides (fat) in the bloodstream, so one might think that doctors are figuring out some basic flaws in the 'dietary fat' hypothesis. Time will tell. But currently, a doctor who wants to preserve funding and credibility will pretend that dietary fat is the problem (See "FOR THE LAUGH TRACK", below).

In the meantime, Prof. Campbell has taken a shrewd approach - he genuflects towards the dietary fat hypothesis and invokes the current China fad, so he ought to have a hit.

FOR THE LAUGH TRACK: The American Heart Association discusses "Metabolic Syndrome", which is basically a collapse of the body's insulin system:

The metabolic syndrome is characterized by a group of metabolic risk factors in one person. They include:

Prothrombotic state (e.g., high fibrinogen or plasminogen activator inhibitor–1 in the blood)

Proinflammatory state (e.g., elevated C-reactive protein in the blood)

People with the metabolic syndrome are at increased risk of coronary heart disease and other diseases related to plaque buildups in artery walls (e.g., stroke and peripheral vascular disease) and type 2 diabetes. The metabolic syndrome has become increasingly common in the United States. It’s estimated that over 50 million Americans have it.

The dominant underlying risk factors for this syndrome appear to be abdominal obesity and insulin resistance. Insulin resistance is a generalized metabolic disorder, in which the body can’t use insulin efficiently. This is why the metabolic syndrome is also called the insulin resistance syndrome.

Taubes discusses this at length. It is very common among poor people on high carb diets, and a high schooler could grasp the connection - the high use of refined carbohydrates in the diet overloads the insulin system to the breaking point. So what does the AHA recommend?

I DAZZLE MYSELF WITH SCIENCE: Gary Taubes and Michael Fumento had an epic brawl about Taubes' 2002 article (article, Fumento, Taubes responds, Fumento again). At one point Mr. Fumento (himself the author of a 1997 book about obesity in America) exhorts the reader to go to PubMed, type in "low carbohydrate obesity" and ee for himself.

Of course, he was writing back in 2003. However, here are the first and eighth hits today:

Successful weight loss can be achieved with either a low-fat or low-carbohydrate diet when coupled with behavioral treatment. A low-carbohydrate diet is associated with favorable changes in cardiovascular disease risk factors at 2 years.

The low carb alternative was not calorie restricted as to fat or protein - eat all you want! [Let me add that Taubes pans this very study for failing to emphasize that one program was calorie resticted.]

Dietary modification led to improvements in glycemic control and medication reduction/elimination in motivated volunteers with type 2 diabetes. The diet lower in carbohydrate led to greater improvements in glycemic control, and more frequent medication reduction/elimination than the low glycemic index diet. Lifestyle modification using low carbohydrate interventions is effective for improving and reversing type 2 diabetes.

95% of the very-low-carb dieters were able to reduce or eliminate their medications, compared to 62% of the low-calorie dieters.

At least the concept is being studied. And these results seem to break Taubes' way, althuogh I skipped past other studies that struck me as not quite on point. SPEAKING OF

MORE LESSONS FROM CHINA: These Chinese scientists studied US time series data (article, discussion) and concluded that, after a time lag, obesity and diabetes correlate well with the fortification of grains with niacin in the 30's and again starting in 1974. Wow - blame Big Goverment (and Nixon! Or Ford...). Their data also implicate grain consumption (as it must, since enriched grains provide nearly half our dietary niacin), but sugar gets a pass.

And how about this - water-soluble niacin is eliminated throgh perspiration (but reabsorbed through the urinary process), so wide-spread adoption of air-conditioning may be leading to "chronic B-vitamin overloads".

And the study buries some good news - given the time lags, obesity due to the 1974 standards change should have peaked; diabetes will peak in 2025.

I am with the stars of the Nov 2010 Atlantic Monthly piece who note that nutritional research is largely crap.
LUN

See tomorrow's CP for more on my thoughts about medical research.

When Dr Atkins was popular (I still find it generally works for me as long as I can stand it) and the medical and nutritional establishments attacked it, they neglected to note a couple of things:(1) there is not a single reliable study linking dietary cholesterol with blood cholesterol and (2) studies "have gone back and forth on the health benefits of eating fat and carbs and even on the question of whether being overweight is more likely to extend or shorten your life."(3) Changes in" markers like cholesterol levels,
blood pressure, and blood-sugar levels often don't correlate as well with long-term health as we have been led to believe."

Maybe livin on nuts and berries just makes it seem like you're living longer.

Sugar, soluble carbohydrates, and fiber all have correlations with cancer mortality about seven times the magnitude of that with animal protein, and total fat and fat as a percentage of calories were both negatively correlated with cancer mortality.

Years ago--also in the Atlantic--a scientist who works with biological statistics, surmised that artherosclerosis was really caused by some low grade infection--made a very persuasive argument for his hypothesis.

A google check indicates that there is now greater attention being paid to this notion: http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4648
"There is also research that indicates an infection — possibly one caused by a bacteria or a virus — might contribute to or even cause atherosclerosis. The infectious bacteria, Chlamydia pneumoniae (klah-MID'e-ah nu-MO'ne-i), has been shown to have a significant association to atherosclerotic plaque. The herpes simplex virus has also been proposed as an initial inflammatory infectious agent in atherosclerosis.

The notion that chronic infection can lead to unsuspected disease isn't foreign to most doctors. For example, bacterial infection with Helicobacter pylori is now known to be the major cause of stomach ulcers. The treatment for this condition now routinely includes antibiotic therapy. "

--In the meantime, Prof. Campbell has taken a shrewd approach - he genuflects towards the dietary fat hypothesis and invokes the current China fad, so he ought to have a hit.--

On a home made cigarette?

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My wife cut refined sugar and flour products out of our diets a few years ago and within a couple of months I had dropped twenty pounds even though I was eating as much as ever and if anything, the food tastes better .

Abarb's link is good. The truth I think is that observational studies are fairly useless, there are so many variables in diet it's hard to imagine a worthwhile nutritional study and the area has become totally politicized. If you want to know who is responsible for a great deal of American overweight--look at our govt, the AMA, the AHA ,and Conagra which in 1992 revised the food pyramid and told use to eat more grains (7-11 servings a day per adult).

Heather, lard -- old fashioned tub lard, not the block stuff which is somewhat hydrogenated -- is high in monounsaturated fatty acids and long-chain stearic acid, which are comparatively healthy fats. Go for it.

More generally, I went onto the radically low carb diet last Sunday, and have lost 13 lbs so far. I'm doing the variant where you have one high-carb day a week, which is both more tolerable -- when I started to crave a peanut putter and jelly sandwich on Thursday I knew I could have one soon if I were still craving it -- and has some evidence of producing more effective weight and fat loss.

The day before my greatest single day weight loss, I had a four egg omelet with olive-oil herb-marinated mozzarella, two double whoppers with cheese but no bread (Burger King will make those for you on request) and a one-pound rib eye steak drizzled with herbed olive oil (since I had it from the mozzarella) and about 2 cups of rustic upland Greek salad, ie, tomatoes, feta cheese, onions, cucumbers, and olive with a red wine vinegar vinaigrette with dill and thyme.

The day before that dinner was about 1.5 lbs of marinated grilled shoulder lamb chops.

The sacrifices one makes, sigh.

I don't have bloods for this pass yet, but when I did this two years ago, I lost about 50 lbs and at the end my total cholesterol was 92. I had to go off statins because my tsc was getting unhealithily low.

The lo carb diet does work..though it is disgusting how much more quickly all diets work on men. Good you take a day's break.

Carbquik is a product you may want to order. It will allow you to make low carb things like pancakes and muffins. Dreamfields pasta is another brand you need to become acquainted with.

One other good thing about lo carb is that it's easier to maintain when you are traveling and permits you to join friends for meals out without wrecking the diet.

OT but Bush proven right again on Saddam--this time by the Guardian which naturally still finds a way to blame him.
AT
January 08, 2011
Saddam's WMD stockpile raided by Al Qaeda on 2003
Clarice Feldman

Barcepundit reports on this story from the left wing UK Guardian, which details how in the early days of the Iraq war Al Qaeda was able to get its hands on a huge store of Saddam's weapons:

According to the piece, the material included chemical weapons precursors, as well as explosive used to detonate nuclear weapons (yes, they had been in store for years, but if they're deadly for al-Qaeda to have, wouldn't they be for Saddam too?)

So the Guardian doesn't note the irony that they're blaming Bush and the U.S. for the negligence of allowing al-Qaeda to steal... what wasn't supposed to be there in the first place. Haven't we been listening all these years that this was "based on filthy lies"?

It never ceases to amaze me how all these obtuse discussions on nutrition, diet, growing obesity, etc., never mention the contribution of w*rk or exercise to maintaing weight ("w*rk" is apparently a dirty word these days).

No study of diet and nutrition and their effects on the body is complete without delving into the population's lifestyles with regard to burning calories.

I once had the exquisite pleasure of taking the deposition of Durk Pearson, he of "Life Extensions" fame and a frequent Johnny Carson guest. His thesis was that you could live to about 120 if only you ate the right things, all of which were borderline inedible and, at best, quite ghastly and revolting. Wish I had saved the transcript of that one.

Thoughts and prayers for Rep Giffords, the other victims and their families. Cartel related or not, sooner or later the Corona Cartel will wipe out the Dos Equis, Oso Negro, Jose Cuervo, San Miguel, Carta Blanca, Tecate, Bohemia, Ron Rico and Bacardi Cartels. Lawlessness begets lawlessness. Wots 'at you say? There are no beer cartels? Alcohol is legal and they don't use deadly force to eliminate competition for obscene profits made selling illegal substances? Well blow me down! Hmmmmmmm.

Mark Twain's autobiography just got published. He wanted 100 years to pass. And, it did. Among his collected stories, is one he tells when he was in Hawaii. And, men rescued from a clipper ship that had gone down ... And, had been out at see for months ... related that the starvation conditions actually made people who had been sick, healthier.

One such sailor had "abscesses." But during the period of starvation, they ceased to exist. Two passengers, who had been on the clipper ship, where brothers. Who had taken the trip because one of the brothers was very sick. He not only survived the starvation, his prior illness didn't kill him.

So? Well, it seems there's a theory that if you give up food intake your body repairs. First I ever heard this mentioned. But if the theory works, then two days (more or less) without food, could be a cure.

Hot Air:
"Update (AP): Exercise caution since names can be mistaken, but I’m getting multiple tips that this YouTube channel — created by “Jared Lee Loughner” — could be the gunman’s. There are three manifesto-type clips there; the one below is called “Final Thoughts” and was posted last month. As Jon Henke said on Twitter, he sounds like an anarchist, complaining about “currency that’s not backed by gold and silver” and how “you don’t have to accept the federalist laws.”"
LUN
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Hotair:
"Update (AP): Here’s a list of favorite books from Loughner’s YouTube profile. One is by Ayn Rand, a few others are even more famous:

I had favorite books: Animal Farm, Brave New World, The Wizard Of OZ, Aesop Fables, The Odyssey, Alice Adventures Into Wonderland, Fahrenheit 451, Peter Pan, To Kill A Mockingbird, We The Living, Phantom Toll Booth, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Pulp,Through The Looking Glass, The Communist Manifesto, Siddhartha, The Old Man And The Sea, Gulliver’s Travels, Mein Kampf, The Republic, and Meno."
LUN
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I don't think most tea partiers are fans of The Communist Manifesto. Luckily most libs are afraid of guns or we would have incidents like this every day.

Has anyone read Krugman's comments on the Arizona shooting? See LUN. Despicable is too kind a word to apply to Krugman's comments.

I'm praying for the injured and killed, and their families, and trying to keep that foremost in my mind in the moment. However, I do hope that Krugman's attempt to use the shootings to score anti-Tea Party points won't go unanswered.

If you listened to Cokie Robert's today you heard her putting out the vile meme that Republican's don't want to see jobless Americans going back to work because its more valuable in defeating Obama to keep them unemployed. Link.">http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/ron-futrell/2011/01/08/cokie-roberts-wonders-do-republicans-really-want-see-jobs-increase">Link.

She generally hides her hatred of the right better than Krugman, but fundamentally she's right in there with the rest of them.

There is also research that indicates an infection — possibly one caused by a bacteria or a virus — might contribute to or even cause atherosclerosis.

Interesting trivia about aspirin and heart disease...

When the studies were done that showed that taking one baby aspirin per day reduced heart attack risk, the logic was that aspirin is a mild blood thinner, and that was the effect that reduced the heart risk. So the general recommendation was promulgated and widely adopted, because it is cheap, easy, relatively harmless. But some significant minority of the population cannot take aspirin -- either they've had an allergic reaction, or they have a history of gastric bleeding. And, quite simply, people being the way people are, there were lots of folks who got the message garbled* and took a baby tylenol instead. But the interesting thing is that tylenol works, too! It now seems more likely that it was the anti-inflammatory property of the aspirin, not the blood-thinning, that was causing the good effect.

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* Reminds me of an old silly joke I learned back in junior high. A man with 8 children goes to the doctor, desperate to stop having more. "Put the rubber on the organ," the doctor told him. Four months later, the man comes in with his wife, who is pregnant again. "Didn't you do what I told you?" "Well, we don't have an organ so we put the galoshes on the piano..."

Beween this stuff and the handling of the shooting in Az, you can see why I do not ever bother getting news from radio or tv. Morons are the reporters. There is time to be filled. They fill it with nonsense. All that's bad for your brain.

As for Cokie's remarks, I am sorry to say that I don't know how else you can read Krauthammer's nonsense a week or so ago when he pummeled the Republicans on the tax bill. As far as I can tell that unfortunate column carried the suggestion that an improving economy would be good for Obama and the Republicans were wrong to compromise in order to avoid watching the economy further nose dive.

It's all about the beans. That seems to be a key message from 'The 4-Hour Body'. In fact, Tex/Mex sans tortillas and rice might be the perfect meal. Turbo-charge effects with icy showers (said to also cure depression). OK, I got the book for Christmas and this is day five. What I like most is the mandatory 'day off' once a week and remedy for stalled weight loss - eat more! What's not to like?

Atkie works great but,eventually, bread and pasta cravings get to me. Beans, so far, take the edge off in a big way.

Reminds me of "Tortilla flat" where the illiterate mom fed her kids nothing but beans and the gringos, thinking that was an unhealthy diet, brought in al sorts of protein,fruit and veggies and the kids got sick on that.

No study of diet and nutrition and their effects on the body is complete without delving into the population's lifestyles with regard to burning calories.

Ah, but Lou, it turns out that Taubes' books do delve into that very relationship, only to discover that there appears to be little correlation. Across a very broad spectrum, it doesn't much matter how much exercise a population gets, obesity correlates with refined simple carbs, not caloric intake nor with caloric output.

I'm doing the variant where you have one high-carb day a week, which is both more tolerable -- when I started to crave a peanut putter and jelly sandwich on Thursday I knew I could have one soon if I were still craving it -- and has some evidence of producing more effective weight and fat loss.

I'm curious about whose variant that is, Charlie -- and what is the evidence it produces more effective fat loss. Sounds to me like it would keep one's addiction to carbs going, and would cause metabolic confusion and take you out of ketosis again. Reminds me of when I thought I could smoke only at parties. After a while, all I did was look for parties.

Charlie, beans? Because I can eat me some beans. Are beans okay? They seem a bit simple carby.

Jim, beans seem to cause me trouble, at least on the initial low carb thing. If you really want to go hard core, get a glucometer: if a meal makes your blood glucose go up and stay up for an hour after a meal, something in the meal is too much for your pancreas.

Barb, I don't know where it originated. I first did it while doing Body for Life, and the Four Hour guy also recommends it, even saying it increases weight loss. It has seemed to work well enough for me.

I will say I don't think "addiction" is quite the right model here. There are plenty of good reasons why we instinctively like refined carbs and sweets; they just got to be too easy to come by for some of us.

I think it's a better model to think of it, if anything, as an inherited lipodystrophy: some of us just have endocrine systems that respond to high glycemic index carbs "abnormally" -- at least as compared with the vile, naturally skinny, eat anything people -- by depositing lots of fat in the white adipocytes, and that leads to obesity, insulin resistance, and then lots of complications.

I think it's a better model to think of it, if anything, as an inherited lipodystrophy...

Yeah, I know, Charlie. (In case you happen to return to this thread) Nonetheless, Taubes, Eades, Atkins, etc. use the shorthand "addiction" when they describe that physiology. Only sayin' that having a weekly cheat day to eagerly anticipate keeps the appetite for those foods thriving, rather than concluding that sugar and grains are what one will avoid for a lifetime. Otherwise it's too easy to succumb (or have "surcame" if you're Cornel West)to the seductions of stuff that harms us. The food that's "legal" for low-carbers is so delicious and satisfying that every day feels like a cheat day.

(Another) Barbara, thanks so much for your informative commentary on Taubes et al. Taubes recommended The New Atkins for a New You, which has 35 pgs. of recipes in 5 catagories: Sauces, Compound Butters and Oils, Salad Dressings, Marinades and Rubs, and Broths. Can you recommend a favorite cookbook for this style of eating that is more familiar with categories like Beef, Poultry, Fish, Salads, etc., and recipes for each dish? Thanks again for your excellent contributions.

I like Dana Carpender's cookbooks, in particular "500 Low-Carb Recipes". More of a basic home-cooking approach, lots of recipes for various meats, vegetable dishes, stews and soups, etc.

There's also "Everyday Low Carb Cooking" by Alex Haas. His recipes are very good, although he wants to put sweetener in almost everything for some reason and I ignore this ingredient unless it's a dish that's supposed to be sweet.

If you see this, Debin NC... (I was late getting back to this thread, thinking it had fallen out of favor for the moment)

The cookbook in which I've found the most interesting and tasty recipes for my household is "The Ultimate Low-Carb Diet Cookbook" by Donna Pliner Rodnitzky. Fran McCullough's are also good, and so are Dana Carpender's, which you've already ordered.

One thing that's true though: You don't really need a cookbook as you become acquainted with what you want to avoid and what you want to eat. That probably takes awhile and some practice and experimentation, but you will soon be able to adopt family favorites to comply with your new way of dining. I've been at this for quite a long time and I just automatically adjust recipes to fit with the lifestyle. I love to eat and I love to cook and in our house the meals are delicious and satisfying. The best part of low-carb is that you and your household will always feel well fed and never hungry or deprived. Good luck!